Last Friday the CEF National Board of St. Kitts and Nevis hosted their first ever walk-a-thon fundraiser!

Fundraising walks are very popular in St. Kitts and we had about 20 people participate! The board will be hosting another walk-a-thon this Fall and it will likely have even more in attendance!

The event started at 7pm with prayer and then everyone started off together.

The walk was about 11 kilometers. Sean and I didn’t realize it was that far… living on an island makes it seem like much less. We honestly thought it would take about 2 or 2 1/2 hours to complete. Maddy and I went home after the walk started because it was held so late. This turned out to be for the best because Sean didn’t get home until after 11pm!

Everyone had a great time and the evening ended with refreshments back at the CEF office! It was a great fundraiser and seemed to be a lot fun.

I could keep writing about it but I’ll get to the pictures…

Maddy and I were there to cheer on the participants before it got too late

Where the participants would begin their walk outside the CEF office

They would walk beyond the neighborhood on the hill (Bird Rock) turn around and come back!

Group prayer before they began the walk

And they were off! Complete with a police escort!

Thank you so much to everyone who prayed for this fundraiser to be successful! We are so encouraged to see the ministry here quickly becoming self-supported and locally funded!

It’s hard to believe March is here! We are busy busy here in St. Kitts…

Visitors

Last week Beverly and Jan (American CEF workers in the Caribbean) and some family visited us! We always enjoy hosting people so we can show them around, hang out and even do some ministry together. We loved getting to know them better.

They were so gracious and brought school supplies to give out to needy kids at a nearby village. The students were grateful to have pencil sharpeners because they were using knives instead. Sean and our guests also spoke at a morning assembly at William Connor Primary School where they shared an Easter lesson with the kids. We have an on-going relationship with this school and are in the process of getting the first ever After School Good News Club in St. Kitts started there.

Students at William Connor Primary School

Meeting with Many Pastors

Mavis Huggins, the new National Director in St. Kitts, has set up several meetings with pastors in the next week. Like I mentioned above, we are trying to start the first ever After School Good News Club in St. Kitts at William Connor. However, it’s not just the first GNC… it will also be the first church partnership too! The vision is for the churches in St. Kitts to “adopt” a local primary school, supply all the volunteers and really pour into the kids they teach. We will train them and provide the materials needed for them to have their own church’s ministry in the school.

William Connor will be the first… so Sean and Mavis are sharing the vision with pastors in the area this week and next. It is our hope that we could start at least one 6 week series before the end of this school year!

What Is The Gospel? Books Are Here

We received all of the books just this week! We are so thankful to have them and will be handing out all 150 in the next coming months!

One box of What Is The Gospel? Books

Saying Goodbye

On Monday Luke and Jamie Jones will be leaving St. Kitts. They are missionaries here but are returning home. We have enjoyed getting to know them and they have become dear friends. We are sad to see them go and we will miss them very much.

Please pray for the pastors Sean and Mavis are meeting with to “catch the vision” and see the need to reach out to these kids. And please also pray for the upcoming Teacher Training course in Nevis this Spring.

It is so exciting to see the ministry really taking off here!

Thank you!

In our last blog post we asked for your prayers and gifts to fund something called, What Is The Gospel? Project. It is our desire that all of the teachers we train in St. Kitts and Nevis know the Gospel so intimately that they teach it properly to children.

The books are donated by The Gospel Coalition but we needed to pay for shipping them to St. Kitts.

Within days of asking for your help we received all of the funds necessary!!

We are so grateful to the Lord for providing the money needed and we are blown away by how quickly the money was given! Wow!

We will be posting about the books as soon as we receive them! Thank you so much!

In Other News…

On February 1st Mavis Huggins, the new National Director, began work. Sean has been working with her everyday as she becomes more familiar with the ministry and what her duties entail. She will be working alongside Sean until the Fall when she will attend CMI (Children’s Ministries Institute) in Missouri to complete her training.

Last weekend the National Board along with Sean and Mavis had their annual board retreat. They were able to get some practical strategies developed to reach all of the children in the country, they planned fundraising events for the next year (including a walk in March that Sean and I will participate in) and they set goals for 2013.

The board, Mavis and Sean believe we should be able to confidently step out of our role by January 2014.

We are so excited to see the Lord growing CEF here in St. Kitts and Nevis!

And because tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, here are a few sweet cards from our students in Good News Club!

Happy Valentines Day!

January has been one of those months when things seem a little slow…

We didn’t even come back to St. Kitts until 10 days into 2013 and since then we’ve been without a vehicle for part of the time… unable to go anywhere.

It’s a little hard to do ministry when you can’t leave your house!

Because we were gone for part of the month, most of our plans don’t begin until February. But we still remember what it’s like to be busy! We remember not having a moment to ourselves for three months of summer last year… and what’s it’s like to see the beach but literally not have time to enjoy it! Many people assume that because we live in the Caribbean we must be relaxing at the beach all the time… that sure sounds nice! But if we don’t make time to enjoy St. Kitts then months go by without us even considering to appreciate the place God has called us to.

So for January… we have taken advantage of the “slow” weeks of ministry. We’ve been to the beach and we went on a Rainforest hike with Maddy. We’ve enjoyed spending time together as family and having other people over to our house for dinner.

Maddy playing in the sand at South Friars Beach

Sean and Maddy on the Rainforest Hike

It’s not like we don’t have work to do however! Sean seems to be working on a different annual report everyday! We’ve had two board meetings and our Good News Club started back up last week. Mavis, our new national coordinator who will be taking our place, is officially starting February 1st. So Sean has been preparing things for her to do. Even though it’s January we are trying to “nail down” when our summer mission trips will be here. There are already so many who want to come and we are running out of summer to host them!

It seems as if this will be our last “laid back” week for a while. With Mavis starting work on Friday, Sean will have much to do. We have a TCE course (Teaching Children Effectively) to prepare for this Spring in Nevis and we really want to get two After-School Good News Clubs started by March!

What Is The Gospel? Project

We are also asking for you to help with a new project. The Gospel Coalition will donate two cases of the book, What Is The Gospel? by Greg Gilbert but we need to pay for shipping the cases to St. Kitts. One of the big issues we have come across in St. Kitts is that many people do not really understand the Gospel. There is much “head knowledge” and little “heart knowledge”. Children often know many Bible stories but have no idea why Jesus died on the cross. Unfortunately, this stems from a lack of understanding in the teachers about what the Gospel is, and the importance of teaching it to the children. We, of course, do teach our teachers the Gospel in our training classes and stress how important it is to share the Gospel with children every week but we want to do more.

We would like to give each TCE graduate and all current Good News Club teachers a copy of this book that explains the Gospel in more detail. The cost for shipping two cases of these books will be around $250. Would you consider donating to this project? If so, then simply make a donation to our account and designate your gift as Sean and Mandi Miller What is the Gospel? Project. We would like to get these books in the hands of our teachers as quickly as possible!